For a wireless device (such as a cellular phone) to create a connection to another telecommunication device (wireless or otherwise), a so-called bearer (service) must be selected. A bearer is, in general, a service providing a specified QoS (quality of Service) between two defined points in a telecommunication network. For example, as indicated in FIG. 3, in a communication via a UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) network between a wireless terminal/user equipment (UE) device and another telecommunication device attached to another network than that to which the UE device is attached, an end-to-end (bearer) service is provided as a combination of bearer services between intermediate points in the communication path: a local bearer service is used to provide communication between the terminal equipment (TE) and mobile termination (MT) of the UE; a UMTS bearer service is sued to provide communication between the MT and a core network (CN) gateway to the other network; and an external bearer service provides communication between the CN and the other network. Since within the UMTS network some of the communication is wireless and some is not, the UMTS bearer service is itself a combination of bearer services, which are in some cases further partitioned. Thus, e.g. the UMTS bearer service includes a radio access bearer service for communication between the MT and the CN Iu edge (the edge of the CN that interfaces with CN gateways to other networks), and the radio access bearer service is itself a combination of a radio bearer service between the MT and the RNC (radio network controller) of the UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) component of the UMTS network and an Iu bearer service (between the RNC and the CN Iu edge). The radio bearer service and the Iu bearer service (which are transport layer bearer services) are in combination mapped to (depend on) lower layer bearer services, namely a UTRA bearer service, such as WCDMA-FDD (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access-Frequency Division Duplex), and a physical bearer service for communication between the node B/base station and the CN Iu edge; the mapping is thus because of the different technologies by which the communication is accomplished (WCDMA-FDD vs. ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), for example).
As used here, a “bearer” indicates a network that is an essential component of a communication path by which a wireless device communicates with another telecommunication device. Thus, examples of a bearer as that term is used here include: Bluetooth, UTRAN and WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network). Thus, a bearer as that term is used here, in case of UTRAN, indicates the UMTS bearer service as described above. (GSM's (Global System for Mobile Communication) SMS (Short Message Service) or CSD (circuit-switched data) are not bearers as that term is used here, but are instead services using a bearer, i.e. using a wireless technology.)
In cases where different bearers can be used to provide a desired connection between a wireless device and another telecommunication device, according to the prior art the user of the wireless communication device is sometimes given the opportunity (via a user interface) to select which bearer to use. A user will, in such an instance, typically rely on a predetermined strategy for deciding between the possible connections—such as always preferring the lowest cost connection, or always preferring the highest (dynamic) bandwidth (based e.g. on the number of devices interconnected via the bearer), or the connection that can be made the fastest (i.e. the lowest latency), and so on. Since users of telecommunication equipment typically do not want to make the same decisions over and over again, it would be advantageous to have wireless telecommunication equipment automatically select a bearer in case of a connection that can be made using different bearers.